He admits he has imagined this. How many times, that he is not willing to admit.
To be entirely specific, this is not happening yet.
But it is about to. The air is filled with a sudden charge and he just knows. Of course he knows. He’s no innocent.
But this is not how he’d imagined it, how he’d intended it.
They are not in a quaint bed and breakfast, or a boutique hotel in Gramercy Park. There are no flowers. They are not recently sated from a sumptuous meal, nor deliciously soft around the edges from a bottle of shared red wine, sipped slowly.
And there is now a streak of a deep reddish purple color called “Fabulous Grape” running up his neck, across his ear and into his hair.
Forty-five minutes earlier…
“All right, Beesly,” he greets her when she opens the door. “Here I am. Very cryptic message, by the way: ‘Be here at noon. Wear old clothes. Bring a bucket.’ Are we moonlighting in the crime scene clean up field? Paper not wild and crazy enough for you anymore?”
She is positively adorable, dressed in a pair of paint-spattered jeans with a hole in one knee and a yellow t-shirt with “Calcutta Flower Market” printed on it in orange calligraphy. Her hair is up in a ponytail and she is barefoot.
They are exactly 23 days past their first date. The ring has been hidden in his sock drawer for 16 days. Three nights ago, he stopped by the liquor store to get a bottle of wine and when the clerk asked what he was looking for, the sentence “My girlfriend likes Shiraz” came tripping off his tongue.
He hasn’t actually used that word to her yet.
He has, however, used the other word. The L one. That one came up during the first date.
“I love you,” he said, as she chewed a bite of eggplant parmesan. “I always have. Just so, you know, we’re clear on that point.”
She swallowed and regarded him with bright eyes and dancing lips as she fought to keep her smile under control.
“Good,” she replied. “Because I love you too.”
He had no shot of keeping his grin in check and his cheeks stretched to capacity.
The table, much to his dismay, was too wide to lean across without actually chest-planting into the bread basket.
“Yeah,” he mused, speaking to himself as much as to her, if not more. “Definitely kissing you when we get out of here.
He did, too, in the parking lot, in the front seat of his car, his hand on her cheek and his tongue slipping inside her mouth to taste tiramisu and cappucino.
They aren’t at the point in the relationship where every conversation ends with “I love you” or every encounter begins with a kiss. It’s nice, actually, that split second of “is this…okay?” before every touch, every caress, every kiss.
So she greets him with a smile and announces that they are going to paint an accent wall.
“What kind of accent?” he queries, following her into the living room, where she has moved all the furniture to the back of the room, near where the sofa is, and has spread newspapers and old bed sheets on the floor. “French? Russian? Cockney? Canadian? Brooklyn? Southern?”
He adopts each accent as he says its name and her shoulders shake in silent laughter.
“Fabulous Grape,” she announces, pointing to the large swatch she’s painted on the wall. It’s a purple-red color that vaguely reminds him of a bruise.
“Fabulous Grape?” He teases. “I like it. If we add vodka, we can do shots.”
But shots will have to wait, because she hands him a roller and sets him to work painting large swaths across the center of the wall while she tends to the edges with a brush. For a while they don’t speak, they just paint.
It’s soothing, the quiet.
Karen had hated quiet. She’d always wanted to have some sort of conversation going, and if it wasn’t talk, it was music, or the news, or anything else. Sometimes, the rare nights he had to himself, he would shut off all the lights and lay with his head beneath his pillow, breathing in the silence.
It was funny. He’d seethed inwardly every time Karen had announced plans to him rather than asked him. He couldn’t help feeling like some pet, or boyfriend doll for her to play with.
But when Pam hands a paint roller and puts him to work, well… he just spent so long watching her not seize what she wanted, it’s nice to see her take charge. And if he is what she wants to take charge of, well, he’s all in favor of that.
All in favor of it.
She loves how her space feels with Jim in it. Like it’s more complete, like it’s all tied together, not that she’s comparing him to a throw rug or an accent table, it’s not like that at all. It’s just that, well, when she looks over and sees him, she feels at home.
He feels her eyes on him and looks down, smiling, because he is here and she is here and it’s just, God, where he’s always wanted to be.
She’d tried to get Roy to help paint the living room of the house they’d shared once, and he had grumbled and groaned so about having to unplug the television for an afternoon that she’d eventually sent him off to Kenny’s to watch the game while she’d spent the rest of the day alone, painting the walls with a the company of a Matt Nathanson CD Jim had loaned her.
But here’s Jim, contentedly rolling purple paint on to a wall that’s not even his. God, she loves him. So much. Embarrassing amounts.
“You want a drink?”
He nods. “Please. And thank you.”
She can’t recall Roy ever having thanked her for getting him a drink.
She rises, paintbrush still in hand. He is concentrating on keeping the paint even, taking pains to be sure her home is just how she wants it. A lock of hair falls into his eyes and, not wanting to lose his rhythm with the roller, he tries to blow it back into place, to no avail.
She giggles and reaches up to push the unruly strands back, touching him for the first time that day.
It’s never been like this, not with any other girl, ever, this feeling every time she touches him, like… butterflies.
Okay, so he’s a 13-year-old girl. Or Sarah Jessica Parker. He doesn’t care.
She’ll never admit this, not to anyone, not even to him, but when he looks at her like that, she wants to literally squeal and jump up and down like a little girl.
Instead, she smirks and paints a Fabulous Grape streak up the side of his face.
When the instant of shock is over, he shakes his head at her.
“Oh, Beesly,” he intones, his voice low. “You are in so much trouble.”
But the sparkle in his eye says she is anything but.
Her only other first time, with Roy, senior year of high school, had been utterly, completely the opposite of spontaneous.
They’d made plans for a night his parents were going to be out of town and she’d told her parents she was spending the night at Jocelyn’s. She’d worn brand new underwear and a matching bra, and he’d cleaned his room and made a mix tape. The whole thing had been very sweet, in an adolescent kind of way, but utterly passionless, and it had set the tone for the next eight-and-a-half years.
But now, right now, Jim is staring at her with love and lust and amusement and her future in his eyes, and he hasn’t even kissed her yet, but she knows, she just knows that this is going to happen.
Then…then…he reaches up with the roller and paints a purple stripe across her rib cage.
She is aghast and delighted and this is at least a thousand times better than Garrett Cooper tugging on her ponytail in the sixth grade.
“Jim!” she gasps, and when she reaches out to smack his arm she plays right into his hands because he drops the roller and grabs her wrist, pulling her into him. “I love this shirt.”
Her body is pressed against his and he brings the hand holding her wrist up to tangle his fingers through his and draws his other arm up and around her waist. The paint on her yellow t-shirt is soaking into his green one and she is suddenly profoundly aware of her heartbeat and his breath, which is heavy and warm on her face.
“I’ll wash it,” he promises, in a voice he’s never, never used to speak of laundry before, a voice he doubts he’s ever used before at all, deep and graveled as his head inclines and hers, magnetic, tilts up, and then… and then…
Kissing her feels like, oh, that’s what’s been missing even though he hadn’t felt like anything was missing. Her lips are cold water on a hot day, a good massage after a long basketball game, the final bell on the last day of school, anything that means God, yes, that. Just like that.
Her arms are around his neck, Fabulous Grape sticking to her bicep, and she is on her toes and there is no space, no space between their bodies, but it’s still not close enough. He slides his arms from her waist, down over her backside, lingering a moment longer than necessary, and a moment longer than that, down to the backs of her thighs, lifting her off the ground.
She wraps her legs around his waist and her tongue around his and she couldn’t care less about the paint on her arm or her favorite t-shirt or the fact that her rent is overdue or the situation in Darfur or what happens after you die, all she cares about is this.
When he stumbles into the wall, effectively ruining his own paint job, he groans and apologizes into her mouth.
“I don’t care,” she mumbles as he loses his footing and they go tumbling to the floor, overturning the tray of paint and rolling through the purple puddle on to a dry patch, leaving streaks as they go.
When they land finally, with a thud, he panics for a moment that she is hurt until he realizes the shake of her body is from laughter, not tears, and he drops his head into the crook where her neck meets her shoulder.
“You okay?”
“Yeah, you?”
“I’m good. Sorry.”
“Klutz.”
He laughs against her neck and agrees. When he raises his head, she is flushed and laughing and streaked in purple, and he thinks he’s never seen anything so beautiful in his life.
Stretching up, he brushes his lips to her forehead and she closes her eyes to his touch. When she opens them again, she is staring into his, and there’s only one question:
“Are you sure?”
She nods, and he kisses her between her eyes, then on her nose, then each cheek, her chin, and finally her lips.
“I love you.”
He doesn’t have to say it. She knows, God does she know, but she loves hearing it.
“I love you.”
She loves saying it too.
He runs his hands down her sides, grasping the hem of her t-shirt in his fingers and plucking it partway up her rib cage, baring her belly button for him to wriggle down to and kiss.
“We are,” he announces to her Fabulous Grape speckled torso, “very, very purple.”
“Yes,” she agrees, wondering when he’s going to stop talking and take her shirt off. “We are.”
She doesn’t have to wonder long, because he slides the paint stained fabric up her body and over her head.
His shirt follows his, then both of their jeans, tugged and kicked off in a wholly inelegant manner, and then she is laughing and nearly naked beneath him.
Her bra is cotton and nude-colored and her underwear are faded purple and green striped boy shorts she bought on sale at Target two years ago. But then again, making love to Jim had not exactly been on today’s agenda.
“Sorry,” she apologizes, “not exactly my sexiest lingerie.”
“You match the paint,” he chuckles, plucking at a purple stripe on her panties. “But, um, more importantly,” and the stirring she thinks she feels in his boxers, that he definitely feels, tells them both it is indeed important, “you own sexy lingerie?”
She blushes and tries not to think about the hit parade of sexy lingerie she’s quite certain he’s spent the past months looking at. She thinks about the black lacy bra and matching panties still in the tissue paper at the bottom of her underwear drawer. She’d driven back to Steamtown Mall, alone, away from the eyes of the cameras and her coworkers, and had exchanged her pink bathrobe for the set, for when she would no longer be in between boyfriends.
Okay, so she’d bought it for him. She’ll tell him this, eventually. Not yet.
“Maybe,” she tells him coyly, or as coyly as she can muster without coming off ridiculous, instead. “You’ll have to wait and see.”
“I’d like that,” he replies. “But,” he slides a beige strap down her arm and kisses the indentation it’s left on her skin, “I like this too.”
He does. He’d love to see her in black lace or red satin, sure, but he loves that she doesn’t try to have a fashion show with her underwear on a day when she’s expecting to paint. Of course, after 23 days of not sleeping together, the possibility stands that it could happen any time.
She trusts him. He loves it. He loves her. Her mismatched, cotton underwear is genuine. Which is exactly what he wants, what he’s always wanted, why he’s always wanted her why he‘s always loved her. She is so very, very genuine.
In a mist of kisses and caresses streaked with purple paint, the rest of their clothes disappear. When she shies for a moment, trying to cover her breasts with her upper arms, he shakes his head no and nudges her arms away, opening her, whispering to her that she’s beautiful.
She believes him.
He explores her body like a map, like the world, traversing the rounded hills of her breasts, the plains of her belly, the valley between her thighs. He slips his fingers deep inside her and she gasps and calls out his name like an incantation.
He is hard against her thigh and when she takes him in her hand, he is warm and they both moan a little at the contact.
“So good,” he groans, and she preens a bit.
But when he starts to slide down her body and she knows, she just knows what his destination is, she panics.
“Um, no,” she says hurriedly, tugging him up. “Please don’t.”
He pulls himself to face her. “You don’t like…that?” He tries to hide the disappointment he’s feeling. He really, really loves that and doing that with her had been the subject of many, many fantasies.
She blushes bright pink and shakes her head. “No. I…I do…” (Thank God). “It’s just, I didn’t shower this morning.”
He really, really, really does not care about that, but he wants her to feel good, so he nods.
“Can we still…?”
“Yes,” she assures him, nodding rapidly. “Yes, yes, definitely yes.”
He kisses her lips and laughs happily at her enthusiasm. “Do we need…?”
“Pill,” she answers. “I mean, unless…?”
He shakes his head and tries to find the least awkward way possible to say “Karen made me get an HIV test before she would consider letting me bang her without condoms. Oh yeah, and then she changed her mind, so I never got to do that anyway.”
But there’s no un-awkward way to say that. So he settles for: “No, I’m…good.”
When he is finally, blissfully, deep inside her, she sighs with relief and wonders how it could have possibly taken so long to get here.
Story Notes:
I've decided to restructure "Let's Spend the Night Together" as a series. Apologies for any inconvenience, but I just feel it works better that way.
I have no ownership.
I have no ownership.
Author's Chapter Notes:
Title from Bob Dylan's "Lay, Lady, Lay."
Chapter End Notes:
Man, the formatting gave me some trouble on this one!
andtheivy is the author of 17 other stories.
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This story is part of the series, Let's Spend the Night Together. The next story in the series is Lushes, lookin' luscious.
